Inherent inaccuracies?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In general the measure of success is "are they still shooting at me?" This isn't really a distinctive feature of muskets, though, I suspect muskeeteers still managed fewer bullets per enemy casualty than assault rifles (averages are hard to find but apparently ever-increasing, looks like about 50,000 per kill in Vietnam and continuing to get worse with later wars).

Which has very little to do with inherent inaccuracy of the weapon. It's mostly about the inherent inaccuracy of "I'm shooting bullets into a large area that might have an enemy somewhere in it".

Quite but no individual musketeer would have any reason to feel that his fire had stopped the enemy from shooting at him any more than an individual voter could feel he prevented the candidate he disliked from winning. With repeaters or more to the point machine guns, one man can stop a charge personally.